[2205.11858] Incentive-compatible public transportation fares with random inspection Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Search arXiv Press Enter to search · Advanced search Economics > Theoretical Economics arXiv:2205.11858 (econ) [Submitted on 24 May 2022 ( v1 ), last revised 24 Apr 2026 (this version, v2)] Title: Incentive-compatible public transportation fares with random inspection Authors: Inácio Bó , Chiu Yu Ko View a PDF of the paper titled Incentive-compatible public transportation fares with random inspection, by In\'acio B\'o and Chiu Yu Ko View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: We consider the problem of designing prices for public transport where payment enforcing is done through random inspection of passengers' tickets as opposed to physically blocking their access. Passengers are fully strategic such that they may choose different routes or buy partial tickets in their optimizing decision. We derive expressions for the prices that make every passenger choose to buy the full ticket. Using travel and pricing data from the Washington DC metro, we show that a switch to a random inspection method for ticketing while keeping current prices could lead to more than 59% of revenue loss due to fare evasion, while adjusting prices to take incentives into consideration would reduce that loss to less than 20%, without any increase in prices. Subjects: Theoretical Economics (econ.TH) Cite as: arXiv:2205.11858 [econ.TH] (or arXiv:2205.11858v2 [econ.TH] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.11858 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Inácio Bó [ view email ] [v1] Tue, 24 May 2022 07:33:37 UTC (103 KB) [v2] Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:35:37 UTC (136 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Incentive-compatible public transportation fares with random inspection, by In\'acio B\'o and Chiu Yu Ko View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: econ.TH < prev | next > new | recent | 2022-05 Change to browse by: econ References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab) Major funding support from